What do we do when the world goes mad?

We feed the world beauty

Art: Brook Shaden

Last month I told the old, old story of The Grandmother —otherwise known as The Path of Needles and Pins. This tale is the oldest version of Little Red Riding Hood that I know —it is older than the Red hood, older than the cloak. It is considered to be a tribal root story that was later spun in northern France and Italy. I caught it 20 years ago.

Photo of Tasha Tudor

I told it again Friday night, at a Solstice gathering with 50 people. All ages. We used our hands to make craft and to make fire with a bow drill. We made god’s eyes with yarn and sticks. We blessed our meal and feasted together. The river runs through the property, and we dunked ourselves in the breath exhale of exhilaration cold.

We storied, we sang. We remembered. We fed the land, the story and the soul.

The story has a specific medicine that is stitching its way into the hem of my skirt. It has to do with The Great Forgetting and the River of Wild Remembering. I see the wolf in the story in a a new light -his hungry belly —hungry, hungry, hungry for remembering. The grandmother lived at the edge of the forest in a hut of remembering. The wolf devours her. And so it is. We were cut off from the wild ways, the old ways, the remembering ways. The wild daughter in the story outwits the wolf (unlike Perrault’s or Grimm’s versions). She outwits the wolf with her body’s instinctual wisdom and she runs, and she runs, and she runs to the River of Wild Remembering, where she is able to cross with the aid of the washerwoman, washing their moon white sheets.

The Wolf of Forgetting is lead, is dread, is demon-led, is hungry for remembering. He tries to devour the remembering. Through addictions. Through shadows. Through bondage, through clever trickstery.

Artist: Andrzej Strumillo

This story led me to a new story for my online community —a story about the origin of Happiness. A Siberian tale about the daughter of the sun. It’s such a good tale. I want every woman, every child, every man, every elder, every folx, every fox to know this story.

Why? Because the world has gone mad with the Wolf of Forgetting. Why? Because the River of the Fathers is still thrashing. Because The River of Wild Remembering is the Antitode. Because the seed beads of Beauty are the antidotes. Because the Grandmother of Remembering lives in our marrow. We have to let go of a lot of layers, and domesticated ways of seeing and hearing to warm the heart, keep open the heart, and live the beauty way.

Artist: Kindra Nikole

We need to enter the great river of remembering again. I do so through story, song, ritual. How do you?

Yes, there is joy, there is grief. We are shaking in the all of it. All of us, rattles. Of remembering. And…we must become supernovas of beauty. Despite and because of the world gone mad.

Art: Brook Shaden

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